Piero Umiliani – Suspense album art
Suspense is a soundtrack for one or more imaginary suspense movies, composed by M. Zalla – a pseudonym of Piero Umiliani, who also directed the orchestra at the recording in his own Sound Workshop studio. The cover design follows the same approach as other Umiliani records on Fonts In Use: an uncredited designer picked an image/color and used it as large as possible in combination with some big type, in this case all caps Cooper Black Italic.
The track listing on the back is set in Folio [it’s the similar Permanent, see comments]; the album title on the back is set in another, yet unidentified grotesk [Cairoli a.k.a Neue Moderne Grotesk / Aurora-Grotesk I–IV], and “Orchestra diretta dall’autore” (“orchestra directed by the author”) uses Recta.
2 Comments on “Piero Umiliani – Suspense album art”
Hi Matthijs, the unidentified sans is Cairoli, Nebiolo’s name for their version of Neue Moderne Grotesk. Folio is indeed close, but what you found is something that hasn’t been documented here before: it’s Simoncini’s adaptation of Permanent. Designed by Karlgeorg Hoefer and cast as foundry type by Ludwig & Mayer, it was produced for machine typesetting by the Bologna-based company.
Thank you, Florian!